Founding Member

I am pretty new to the EFI stuff (only dealing with it for about 4 years now), and everything is about chips, TwEECer, Moates, Bama, etc... We ended up buying a SCT chip with Bama tune for one of our cars. It turns out to be less than desireable without any way to tune it without pulling it all out and mailing it off. I figured there would be some support to email tunes.

Anyway, getting off topic.
I have been asking on the boards for a while now if there was anything 'plug-n-play', all inclusive, something that you just buy once. Something you buy in one place and can install permanantly with anytime access via a laptop. Everyone says how great that would be, but no one could point to such a system. Everyone says how it would sell like crazy...

Why is this never mentioned?
Is there something widely known wrong with it that I just haven't heard about?

I know it's not a chip, but it's even better. It's everything I was asking for, and at $600 is no more than buying a chip, burner, cables, and software rights for one car! Might even be less, I haven't tallied up all the $200 here, $100 there, multiple purchases needed to fully run AND tune a chip like Quarterhorse...

Admin Dude

Megasquirt as well as the others you've mentioned, get talked about on here all the time. It's not the be-all-end-all in tuning for our cars.

Still though... it's a hell of a lot better than any mail order tune. By that I mean... What is the logic in purchasing a chip tuned by someone who has never laid eyes on your car and has zero performance/tuning data from your car to build a tune from? What do they do? They toss together a tune based on data from cars that may or may not, be similar in setup. You may as well bet all the money you have in your car on your ability to hit the bulls-eye on a dart board with one shot from 25 feet away. Maybe you'll make the shot... Maybe you won't and the whole thing grenades.

I have a 4 bank SCT chip. It was programmed by a tuner who gathered data in real time while my car was on his dyno. Tunes are Base, Open Loop, Closed Loop, and Valet.

Megasquirt as well as the others you've mentioned, get talked about on here all the time. It's not the be-all-end-all in tuning for our cars.

Still though... it's a hell of a lot better than any mail order tune. By that I mean... What is the logic in purchasing a chip tuned by someone who has never laid eyes on your car and has zero performance/tuning data from your car to build a tune from? What do they do? They toss together a tune based on data from cars that may or may not, be similar in setup. You may as well bet all the money you have in your car on your ability to hit the bulls-eye on a dart board with one shot from 25 feet away. Maybe you'll make the shot... Maybe you won't and the whole thing grenades.

I have a 4 bank SCT chip. It was programmed by a tuner who gathered data in real time while my car was on his dyno. Tunes are Base, Open Loop, Closed Loop, and Valet.

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thats why i only deal with 1 shop tuning any of my cars. i know the tuner very well and worked for him for a long time. for my car what i would do is have him burn a chip with basic stuff on it... tell him what it does and when its doing it. (datalogs would be great for this but i dont have anything to datalog my car with.) send him the chip and he makes adjustments as needed.

for an OBS2 car its pretty much the same process just faster since i can use a handheld programmer and datalog it with livewire and he can make the adjustments he needs and emails it to me.

My friend on here (adam95GT) did the whole quarterhorse thing and, after working through a few issues, the car runs fine. Issues getting signals to the laptop, etc. that I would attribute to ANY garage-mechanic installing a piggyback EFI system into a modified car. The startup tune he received started the car 1st try and with a whole lot of reading and a whole lot of test driving we worked out a few of the bugs in the tune (you can't expect a stock tune to run a HCI full bolt on without hickup).

If you aren't ready for some troubleshooting, some significant wiring, and learning a whole new art and putting the hours in, standalones or piggybacks are not for you. You could probably create an entire 2 year college degree on how to install and tune MS. I'll be trying MS in my 94 - I had one on a Ford Probe GT and liked it, and the quarterhorse seemed to have less aftermarket people using it to pull from for tuning advice.

I checked out stangtuning.com and the pms does not seem that hard to tune and they even give you base boost tune parameters and then you can minorly tweak just using a a/f gauge and making some test runs. I have a friend who is tuned on his own with a pms. 351,70mm turbo c4 and trans brake. Never been on the dyno car has been 9.23

Agreed. Unless you plan on tuning many cars or just like learning for the sake of learning, it's probably easier to pay. For those that drive their cars every day or just plain often on highly modified combinations, it does give you more seat/tuning time than just the few hours you get on a dyno tune. A good tuner usually doesn't mind going back/forth with email changes after the dyno appointment to small driveability issues.

I know a lot of people who live by Megasquirt. You just have to know someone who is familiar with them. If you have someone messing with something new, your always going to run into issues, especially when it comes to something so delicate, like tuning. I personally know nothing about it, as I don't have personal experience with it, but the cars I have been in run perfect and have had no issues do to tuning or the MS being at fault.

SN Certified TechnicianMod Dude

I'll be tuning my turbo turd with a PMS. Just gotta find a nearby dyno shop that is familiar with it.

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Not sure how far outside of south jersey you are, but pm me if you need a tuner my buddy has an in ground dynocom load bearing machine and has years and years of pms experience. He also tunes all my stuff as well..